I wake up noticing it’s still dark at five. We’re moving into a new season, and yet, warmth is still to come before the light dims to transition again.
A friend has received a pacemaker. It saves a life and changes it, so he’s with a series of limitations right now.
In this, I feel, nourish, and invite an extra tenderness to my heart today, as it beats loyally between my lungs.
I remember walking in Muir Woods in the winter rain. There was no place to sit as the ground, plants, and benches were wet, and I felt myself moving like the stream.
My cousin who is in Hospice now was told by her oncologist to read Eckhart Tolle. I thought it odd to suggest reading at this point but then I came across these lines of his.
Through death you will find yourself because you no longer identify with form.
I’m alive right now, identifying with form, and gratefully appreciating the rhythm of my heart, and that is this moment, now.
Peaceful, the gentle beat!
So many ways to form and immerseTransitionIn dryness, flowIn sand, growthIn the passage of a tree, a cowboy stanceFrom seeds tossed off a bridge, pumpkins
I spent the last two days with my grandson living in the realm of the imagination. The playground was closed so we settled under a tree with beautiful green leaves. We stretched our necks to become giraffes, and even now I feel my long, flowing neck and lips gently nuzzling and ingesting leaves.
A coyote is howling this morning. Perhaps it’s waking from a dream of the Supermoon last night. My meditation these days is “Beyond Multiplicity”, and I ground in illusion as I juggle, snuggle, crawl through, and open to rainbows in play.
Looking up to hug a treeGiraffe in graceful approach to a savanna overlookSurveillanceThe sky invitesGiraffe at restExplore with the four-legged pace of a giraffe
We drove to Santa Barbara on 101, a reminder of the work involved in growing our food. We passed fields lined with people bent over picking and pruning.
On the way back, we took country roads. In 2012 my sons did the Faultline rally and crisscrossed the California fault line in a vintage Datsun with other pre-1976 cars. They traveled mainly on narrow and challenging roads, not passable in wet weather, which it wasn’t then or now, and discovered uncrowded beautiful landscapes, another example of the variety and complexity of the state in which we live. Our destination for lunch was the Parkfield Cafe, worth it for the atmosphere, food, and apple dumplings.
I didn’t take pictures inside the restaurant as it opens at 11:30 and immediately fills with hungry people, all a little more weathered than we. It felt intrusive to gawk and take pictures of saddle stools and the giant fireplace.We ate outside as we do when we travel with Ebi and Ginger, two rescue greyhounds who attract attention wherever we go.
I offer a taste of our trip yesterday.
Going one wayAnd the otherGolden hillsHappy TravelersLunch is here!The treehouse outside the cafeWe missed the big happening!This is true! We were in grass fed cattle land!Remembering the native people and who came nextWe climb up from Parkfield to overlook the valley belowSummer Gold
We leave Santa Barbara today.Our visit has been exquisite and I want to share another side.As is clear, I love taking pictures. I thought I was taking a picture of a rock with some local history on it but a man in the far distance started yelling at me because he thought I was taking a picture of him. I hadn’t noticed him, as there are homeless people here, and so there is the usual honoring of quiet respect and awareness of the disparity that we sadly know. Back at the hotel, I realized yes, I had captured his image in the background and I deleted it.
Today I post images of rocks and sand, movement, dwelling, connection, and change.
Bubbles surround a rock as we travel round the sun A shell outlives what it hostsA step lasting longer than I Even birds leave footprints in the sandTangled in changeBeauty and GraceLiving Trust
I’ve now cleaned everything out of one room except the moveable bookshelves. The closet is empty and now when I speak, the room echoes. Nothing catches or holds the vibrations of my words.
I take that inside. What if I’m not holding onto memories, especially judgments and/or grudges? I feel I need some anchoring within, some awareness of my travels, connections, and pilgrimages, so I can respond with the wisdom of lessons learned through experience, and yet when is it too much? When is there a need to open and cleanse?
How much do I need to hold onto to feel connected and safe?
Might I choose to be like a bird with the warmth of a nest and the ability to fly through a sky bracketed with branches like shelves? What wisdom does the bird harvest from grasses and leaves?
I’m reading The Starship and The Canoe by Kenneth Brower. He writes about two men, a father and son. The father, Freeman Dyson, is a renowned astrophysicist who designs a spaceship to explore the stars. The son, George Dyson, lives in a tree house and explores the coastal wilderness and waters of the Northwest in a canoe he designed and built.
At one point, George is camped by the Icy Strait. He is alone as the full moon rises when he hears wolves howling near him.
“Wolves had come down silently from the forest and had infiltrated the beach grass. It seemed to George that the sound went straight to the center of his being. It passed through the center and out the other side, traveling over Icy Strait toward the moonlit mountain.
All his sensibilities quickened. Now and again, when the wolves stopped for a moment, George heard each grass blade rustling, each wave lapping. Waiting for the wolves to resume, he heard the blowing of humpback whales as they swung in close to shore.
The wolves were ending their song, when, from the sea, the whales answered it. George swears that this is true. The whale music was, he says, like whistling, trumpeting, and singing combined. It resembled no work of man he knew, but it blended perfectly with the chorus of the whales. The forest’s mournful ululations mingled with the brass winds and wood winds of the deep. The Earth was singing to its moon, and the sea was harmonizing.
George sat silent in the middle of the music, yet did not feel left out. It seemed to him that the two worlds, land and sea, were coming together in him. This morning he had padded, like the wolves, in bare feet on the mossy forest floor, and this afternoon he had paddled Icy Strait, like the humpback whales. A triumvirate, they praised the moon: lupus, George, leviathan.”
Because a new window shade is installed in the room where I write and navigate, I’m having the room painted on Monday which requires moving everything out to begin again. I meditate on optimum feng shui, planning to consciously create a place of nourishment for where I am now. What surroundings do I need to nourish and touch more deeply within?
In this exploration, I go through years of notes from the past. I reflect on my trip to Nepal in 1993, a trip inspired when I received a midlife call. I responded to Sogyal Rinpoche who said to go into nature, and so I did. I went to Nepal without expectation, trusting the call. I was a hollow bone, the place shamans envision and become to invite an inner journey to enter and expand.
In midlife, we birth again, unfold into a wider womb.
I feel that call to birth again as I approach the age of 74. It’s been thirty years since I was trekking in the Everest region of Nepal. At one point, I was walking on a narrow trail through a village when a tiny, old woman beckoned me into an equally tiny, old space, a small opening in a wall of stone. Flickering candlelight revealed a Tangka painting, a photo of the Dalai Lama and sacred books.
Alone, I turned around in this tiny womb, and left a donation. When I emerged, the woman, an elderly, wrinkled nun, placed some kernels of burnt popcorn in my hands. I still taste that burnt offering, feel the touch of the nun and the kernels etched within me.
Clay tablets caught in fires in ancient temples turned to stone. The clay of my memories forms anchors in stone as I age, as I climb to a deeper knowing and trust in all we share.
I respond to the words of Winnie the Pooh.
Sometimes the smallest things take the most room in your heart.
On a shelf in my son’s office Early morning view from their home – July 5, 2023The hills are goldThe path rises with ease
We watched the Fourth of July fireworks on a hill near where one son and his wife live. We walked to our spot with folding chairs, and sat with neighbors as fireworks erupted around us. We shared a view, and when I looked at the photos, I saw galaxies and thought of the Big Bang happening around and in us.
That morning we had brunch with friends who have a ten year old. For her tenth birthday, she was offered a trip anywhere, Hawaii, the Galapagos, whatever she wanted. She chose a place of her own, a “she-shed” placed in a back corner of their yard. She allowed me into her world of enchantment, a lovely lavender abode with places to express, honor, and bring forth her creativitywhich is varied and unique. In her nature cupboard, she carefully opened a box to reveal the perfect, preserved skeleton of a mouse. In another, the discarded skin of a reptile lay treasured in display.
This morning I woke from a dream where I felt the abundance around and in me, the earth thriving beneath my feet, the sky filled with the flight of birds. We live in an exciting and vibrant world. My focus is there, on growth and change, and these words of Emily Dickinson.
To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else.
Fountain DelightExplode in Changing FormRibbon LightPinwheelSpark SoftlyOverlap and CombineFlower Light
The first indoor movie I ever saw was Old Yeller. I was stunned with grief that the little boy had to shoot his dog. I never let my children see that movie. I had never seen Bambi but I finally decided to risk it with my sons. We went to the theater, sat down, and the power went out, so I’ve never seen Bambi.
I’ve also never seen The Lion King, but it’s the second movie my three and a half year old grandson has seen.
When we were at CuriOdyssey with him, we came up to a table a senior citizen was staffing. The table was covered with items to touch, feathers, two tortoise shells, a bobcat jaw, and the skin of a skunk. Grandson held back, looked up at the man, and said he’d seen The Lion King and that it was sad. The man leaned toward him and asked if he was sad when the father died, and he nodded. And the man said he, too, was sad, when the dad died. And then grandson talked about Scar. It was one of those moments in life I didn’t realize I’d taken in until it kept coming back to me, flooding my heart with witnessing the gentle sharing and understanding of an older man and a three year old boy.
When we went outside Grandpa sat on a bench and Grandson curled up next to him. It’s only now that I recognize that Grandson was again snuggled into kindness. This is the world we share.
I’m told The Lion King is about the circle of life, that it is a “story of redemption and overcoming shame, finding yourself, knowing who to trust”, and that I will love it.
Clearly, Grandson understood and trusted that man, and hearts were touched and shared.
Day camp was happening around us, and a group of children passed us carrying their creations made from cardboard boxes and tubes. The creations are made as offerings to entertain and stimulate the animals who live there. A little girl showed me a house she had made for a ferret.
Last night we watched the first episodes of the TV show Silo. I wasn’t quite sure what I thought of it so I watched an interview with the author of the book and the director of the movie. The author, Hugh Howey, was influenced by a sailing trip he took to Cuba over 20 years ago. He’d been warned about the place, propagandized. What he found was the most welcoming and friendly place he’d ever been. He wrote the books to ask us to look beyond screens that deliver continuous bad news to instead visit and learn what is truly happening with a people in a place.
It’s summer and the birds are twittering and tweeting. Our little wren and her mate are busy caring for their nest.
Life is a circle and the circle is Love, pebbled with layers and layers of kindness, like galaxies of stars.
After a bird lunch, bobcat goes inside to restCharlie, the friendly doveBubbles and Foam, Spheres and ShapesCircling
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